Sycarion Diversions

Home of the Odd Duk

Tag: pdf

Upcoming (Hopefully) Kelyn of Ilrion PDF

April 9, 2012 /

Reposted from the Google Plus page:

Looking to expand the Kelyn NPC from the previous post. The post about his unusual companion, Mishabroo, contained information about the mage at various levels. I hope to make it into a PDF with full stats of Mishabroo, two (only two) new proficiencies, new spells, new creatures and hopefully some new magic items. April is really busy, so I'm not sure of the timeline.

It will be stated per the ACKS rules, but hopefully won't be too hard to adapt to other systems.

I worry about proficiency inflation, so I only add two. One of them is a mage class proficiency related to mages that train under Kelyn. It will be similar to the Black Lore of Zahar proficiency. The other has to do with Kelyn's ability to quickly create formulas for magic items.

The spells will deal with Kelyn's unusual focus on constantly improving Mishabroo, his fear of teleportation and psionicists and his dislike of blasting spells like Fireball and Lightning Bolt. One of the spells will be Call Primordial - this is related to a series of posts I did on primordials a few months ago. Some of the other spells, including ritual spells, will come from the SRD.

The new creatures will initially come from his early cross-breeds and constructs. Kelyn has a preference for constructs, mostly because he is trying to duplicate Mishabroo and is unable to do so. Other creatures will be stated forms of the primordials mentioned earlier.

Kelyn won't have a fully detailed repertoire in order to allow GMs to customize him into their campaign. The snapshots of Kelyn through history should also allow adventures in time.

As far as the new magic items, a couple of them will appear to be of little use to the PCs. Hopefully these items can serve as hooks for possible new quests.

Just Do It

September 17, 2011 /

I've met a couple of guys that are interested in running a game on a consistent basis. What will if this works out an I'm in a consistent group that meets together? Possibly go into shock.

Aside from that, I am now faced with bringing together all my stuff together into something cohesive and understandable. See, I explained that I play a hodgepodge of rulesets combined together to resemble 1.5 D&D. Both guys were excited about it.

As a result, I now have the impetus to put Andras together. At least, I've have to create the player's book and the creature collection books.

Will it be as beautiful as Greg Christopher's creations? Not at all. I can't even do the art of an xkcd.com comic. It will probably feature text walls and tables.

So I have the entire 3.0 SRD in rtf. I'll start from there and edit until Andras emerges like a sculpture from a block of granite. Why the 3.0 SRD? For one, it has the psionic attack/defense modes featured in the older versions of D&D. For another, it is closer to 2e than the 3.5 SRD. Sure, I'll have to cut out feats and the classes, but whatever I put back in will be attributed to the correct folks. Some things will come from Labyrinth Lord, LLAEC and Basic Fantasy, other things will come from other OGL postings around the web and the Grand OGL Wiki. I'll have my own stuff as well, like the d20+d10 mechanic, but I plan on being more specific in my section 15 of the OGL. For example, I plan on including the Phrenic Scourge from Lion's Den Press and will say as much.

Will I finish? Well, yes, but I hope the answer has changed from someday to sometime in the next three or four months. As things progress, the pdf and odf files will become available in my downloads section.

Stream of Consciousness

September 11, 2011 /

I try not to broach the fourth wall too much and directly address readers. Indulge me for just a few words to talk about the nature of my posts versus the intent of the downloadable stuff.

When I generate a post, I'm not going for something free from errors. In fact, I welcome any comment about glaring omissions, bad ideas, or kindly inquires about my sources. I even look forward to non-abusive-dude-what-were-you-smoking rants. The point is, many posts are a way to write down ideas in a public place. Some of these half-baked ideas may be developed further, some will not. A series of posts may contradict each other. Take for example the development of the Arcanist. It began with a nod to OpenQuest and will end with a new skill/proficiency mechanic, nods to OpenD6, and the ability to give cantrips to NPCs. Following the threads may be an unholy mess...

Downloads (mostly pdfs and odf files) are intended to be higher quality. I want it to be a finished product suitable for including in a game if anyone wants to use it. So when the Arcanist PDF comes out, it will be the result of effort in layout, ODF template creation, Scribus work, and editing by one or more of my non-gaming friends.

I haven't done any downloadable stuff  since I began regularly posting again this March except for the first draft of the Arcanist. I didn't take it down, but I did make an apology for it's poor execution. In the big scheme of things, it's no big deal, but it did bother me for a long time that I got this idea in my head that I had to publish something, even if it was bad.

Posts will come streaming along like the text of Finnegan's Wake, but when an idea is finalized, I hope the resulting download will be something worthy of your consideration.

Without any suitable way to end this, here's a poll that relates to the previous post about a creature similar to a fire elemental. If the Elemental Plane of Fire doesn't exist, what would you call the plane of origin where one of the species that lived there was pretty much the same as a fire elemental?

[poll id="1"]

© 2024 Sycarion Diversions

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑